SHATTERED Steven and Lauren Downie yesterday revealed their struggle to cope with overwhelming grief after the death of daughter Olivia.
Not even the birth of new son Oliver ? named after the sister he will never know ? has taken the raw edge off their pain.
Olivia touched the hearts of the nation when the Downies became stranded in Mexico earlier this year after flying out for specialist cancer treatment.
Her condition worsened and kind-hearted Scots stepped in to raise more than ?150,000 in just five days so the brave seven-year-old could travel home to die.
Tragically, she lost her fight for life on June 29 ? just nine weeks before her baby brother was born.
In the first interview since Olivia?s death, Lauren, 27, also mum to two-year-old Jessica, admitted: ?It?s Jessica and Oliver that keep us going. We both wanted to join Olivia to be honest ? the only thing that stopped us was them.
?Each day is sore on our hearts and the happiness is gone. We feel guilty for even living without Olivia.
?How can we do anything normal when Olivia is 6ft under? We go to the graveyard most days, we just want to lie with her.?
Lauren said that Olivia ? who was often in so much pain she would beg her parents to shoot her ? had been desperate to meet her new baby sibling but tragically it was not to be.
Oliver was born by Caesarean section three weeks early on September 7, weighing 7lb ?oz ? exactly the same weight as Olivia when she was born.
Lauren added: ?The surgeon?s assistant was really nice to me, then the U2 song With Or Without You came on the radio and that was me ? I was bubbling. I just had Olivia on my mind.
?She wanted to be in there with me. I don?t think she would be allowed to be my birthing partner but I would have asked.?
Olivia, from Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire, was given just a 20 per cent chance of survival when diagnosed with aggressive neuro-blastoma at the age of four.
She spent almost half her short life battling the illness, enduring intensive bouts of chemotherapy and surgery.
Lauren and husband Steven, 34, watched helplessly knowing their little girl would never be cured. And when her pain intensified, they decided to take her to a specialist cancer centre in Mexico to get treatment to help ease her suffering.
Olivia?s condition deteriorated shortly after arriving at the Hope 4 Cancer Institute in June and, with no funds to pay for an air ambulance, the family were left stranded abroad.
A nationwide appeal helped raise the cash to fly them home.
Steven and Lauren visit Olivia?s grave at Kirkton Cemetery,
Fraserburgh, almost every day where they keep a storm lantern lit in her memory.
The funeral costs left the couple unable to afford the ?4000 headstone they had hoped to erect at her graveside.
Lauren said: ?You don?t think you will ever have to plan for your child?s funeral. We didn?t know how much it would cost.
?I designed the headstone myself. When I was told the price, I thought, ?Oh my God.?
?We were left with a huge debt but putting up a headstone for Olivia is the right thing for us to do for her.?
The couple hope to have the stone erected by Christmas Eve ? which would have been Olivia?s eighth birthday.
The Downies thought Olivia was suffering growing pains when she started screaming at night and complaining of a sore back three years ago.
She was diagnosed with neuroblastoma a few weeks later.
Lauren and Steven decided to try specialist RIST therapy in Germany in 2011 after raising ?40,000 for the treatment but it soon became clear that the cancer was not going to disappear.
Brake fitter Steven said the couple couldn?t bring themselves to explain to their little girl that she was dying.
He said: ?We never told her. We always said, ?You?re not well and we?re going to get you better.?
?She gave it an unbelievable fight.
?When she was not well and getting chemo, she never let it hold her back. She just wanted to go to school and be like everyone else.?
But it came to the stage when Olivia was in such agony, it was too much for her to bear.
Lauren said: ?The pain she went through was horrific. They couldn?t control it with morphine.
?She was in constant agony. I used to sit here on edge waiting for her to scream, her back would curl up with the pain.
?Towards the end she would say, ?Shoot me, shoot me?. She asked me if I had a gun and I knew exactly what she meant.?
Steven added: ?That?s when we knew we had to go to Mexico.?
With no options left, the family flew Olivia to the Hope 4 Cancer Institute in the hope they would ease her pain.
But she slipped into a coma and it became clear she was going to die.
Lauren and Steven hope that more NHS-funded treatments and clinics become available in the UK to spare parents being faced with having to raise funds for expensive cancer treatments abroad.
But they say they will never forget the generosity of strangers who helped the family during one of their darkest moments.
Fewer than 100 children are diagnosed with neuroblastoma every year in the UK and two out of three will die from the illness.
More than ?70,000 remains from fundraising efforts for Olivia and the money will go to another child with the disease.
Steven said: ?We would like to say a huge thank you to people in Scotland and all over Britain, for all the funds that were raised to get us home.?
We knew there wouldn't be happy ending
Steven revealed the family went through hell when doctors in Mexico threatened to turn off Olivia?s life support.
He said: ?We could only see her for half an hour at a time, three times a day.
?We were waiting to find out if she would be fit to fly back to Scotland.
?One day she would be all right, the next the doctor would say it didn?t look like she was going to make it.
?When the day arrived that she could fly it was a great feeling, but we knew what was going
to happen.
?We weren?t naive enough to think that everything was going to come right.?
Lauren added: ?One of the things that has hurt me the most is that, since we came home, people have been saying we should never have taken Olivia to Mexico.
?We weren?t going there for a cure.
?We were told from day one there was not a cure for Olivia.?
Source: http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/real-life/parents-of-tragic-cancer-girl-olivia-1442676
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